


one-two step

by lethandralis



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Amputation, Junkrat is trans, M/M, Slow Burn, alcohol consumption, implied sex but no really well described sex, it's not mentioned here anywhere but i thought you should know, vague medical stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-26 09:22:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7568752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lethandralis/pseuds/lethandralis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a lot of folks seem to think that relationships exist only in the black and white, but there is a lot of good to be found in the grey area.</p>
            </blockquote>





	one-two step

It starts out easy. Convenient, even. The Outback is lonely, desolate. Being on the run is worse. And sometimes people have needs, and sometimes those needs can be fulfilled. It is easier to work when you’re not distracted, and there’s always work to be done.

It has been three months since Australia. Jamie finds himself getting used to the rhythm of his prosthetic leg, the tap-thunk-tap-thunk of the peg and then the boot. His posture’s gone to shit since the accident, but he can walk. Mako says he’s got a guy in Korea working on the arm for him, just give him a month to figure out a discrete way to wire it and he’ll be ship shape. Jamie wonders how Mako got to know a prosthetics expert in Korea, but doesn’t ask.

They don’t get drunk every night. It isn’t safe, even though Jamie eyes the bottles of whiskey and bourbon he’s snatched with longing almost daily. Mako says that they ought to save getting wasted for when they can afford to be stationary all night.

“You ever tried to run for your life drunk?” he asks, snatching an entire bottle of vodka out of Jamie’s hands.

Jamie pouts for the rest of the night. Three nights later, they’re tucked away in the back of a semi-truck smuggling counterfeit luxury purses to Egypt. It’ll be a long ride, fourteen hours at least, give or take. The driver has promised to alert them whenever he plans on pulling into a rest stop so they can get out for a few minutes, but other than that they will be entirely alone.

The bike is parked near the back of the trailer, hidden behind boxes. It is hard to stay still on the floor with no seatbelts, but they manage. Mako produces a bottle of whiskey from his pack and they set to work, a lit flashlight on the floor between them.

They take turns passing the bottle back and forth, taking slugs and wiping the mouth of it clean. The booze is shit – cheap and burny and nasty, but it will do.

It is silent for a while. Lots of evenings start out like this, a silent sort of camaraderie. Their days are almost always long, and they are almost always tired, and sometimes they don’t need to talk.

Jamie starts feeling his fingers go numb before he speaks.

“So, you got a girl back home? A guy, maybe? I ain’t one to judge.”

“Why do you care?” Mako has his mask pulled back down over his mouth. He has given the whiskey over to Jamie.

“Makin’ conversation, mate! What else are we gonna do to pass the time, fuck ourselves? That’s not such a bad idea, come to think of it…”

Mako groans. “If you do that, I’m throwing you out of this thing.”

“Hey, hey, hey, hey, just jokin’! I won’t.” Jamie sucks down a mouthful of whiskey and fiddles with the screws on his prosthetic leg. There is still a bandage around what remains of his right arm.

“I don’t have anyone back home, no,” says Mako. “Haven’t ever.”

Jamie nods slow, sets down the bottle of whiskey between his heels and screws the cap on.

“Sorry to hear that, mate,” he says, obviously trying to sound sympathetic but his words blur together.

“Nah. It’s fine,” says Mako. “Never really cared for that shit anyway.”

Jamie thinks to ask what he means by “that shit”, but reconsiders.

The drive wears on. They get drunker. Mako manages to do all of his drinking without taking off his mask, which is impressive, if annoying. Jamie thinks he ought to stop himself when his hands start feeling like wandering, but he doesn’t.

He doesn’t remember how he got here, straddling Mako’s legs in the back of a semi-truck somewhere in, fuck, who even knows where. But Mako doesn’t really seem to mind, and neither does Jamie, and so they continue doing whatever the hell it is they’re doing.

They don’t kiss. Mako doesn't take the mask off. There are no shouted admissions of love or passion. It is not romantic. It is not even terribly sexy. But it does well to pass the time, and each of them has been quite remarkably alone for a long while. They get done, clean themselves off, dress, and go to opposite sides of the trailer, trying to get some sleep.

Jamie has had casual flings before. He has been through these motions. Get a little drunk, do a little flirting, fool around, go to sleep, never speak of it again until it’s convenient. Repeat whenever necessary.

Mako, conveniently, is also familiar with this dance. They do it effortlessly, a one-two step of avoidance and proximity, over and over again. Some nights neither of them even have to ask.

In the daylight, on the run, they keep distance. Call each other names. Make threats. Junkrat rides in a sidecar and complains about bugs in his teeth but refuses to wear a helmet, says he wants to see what’s in front of him. Roadhog rolls his eyes and groans, threatens to leave him at the next rest stop.

He never does. He never has.

* * *

 

They drop by Seoul for the arm and Jamie has to have “minor surgery” in order to connect the damn thing to his brain. He goes under terrified, wakes up with a brand new metal hand (his own design, thank you very much). Mako is there, looming in the tiny sterile hospital room, wearing a button-down and slacks, looking as normal as he can. Baseball cap, sunglasses, scarf wrapped around his lower face. Undercover. He pays for everything in cash, makes up new names for both of them. Nobody in the hospital asks them anything out of the ordinary, for which they both count themselves thankful.

Jamie’s hand will take calibration, the doctor says. Physical therapy, to get it working like one would expect a normal hand to. Six months to a year for full fine motor skill function, and follow-up appointments after that to make sure the circuitry is all in working order. Jamie is in Japan by the time his first PT appointment rolls around. He is in Singapore for the second.

He tries doing it himself, at first. When he can remember, he tries to practice holding things, throwing things, flexing each metal finger one by one. But there is no schedule to it. Sometimes it’s three times a day, sometimes it’s once a week. He tries to hold a pencil and ends up breaking it.

Mako has always had a better concept of time than he has. He’s the one who remembers what the date is, when a shipment they want to bust is due, how long it’s been since they departed Australia. And he remembers.

“Hey,” he says one day while they’re holed up in a cramped motel room in India. “Y’havent done your physical therapy today.”

Jamie, hanging upside down off the edge of the bed, considers this. “Suppose I haven’t. Thanks, mate.”

And it happens the next day, and the day after that, too, until it grows into such a habit that Jamie waits to do it until Mako tells him he hasn’t, even on the days where he remembers.

Sometimes Mako helps. Spends fifteen minutes bending Jamie’s robotic fingers back and forth, rolling the wrist back and forth in his massive hands. Says it might help to get some different movement in. “Had to get something like this done to my knee, once. Long time ago.”

Mako paints his nails black every other day, silently, a ritual. Jamie is never entirely sure where he gets the polish; every so often it is a different brand, a differently shaped bottle, a different smell. But it is always there.

Jamie starts asking for his nails painted, too.

“Can’t do it myself real well, but would’y mind?”

Mako nods, reaches for Jamie’s real hand. Jamie offers it.

He says one day that you’ve got to keep to routines, even when you’re on the run. “Keeps you sane,” he says. “Keeps you going.”

Jamie has never had routines. The Outback was never quite convenient for routines; you did what you had to, whenever it needed to be done. You slept when you could, ate when you could, tried to take a bath in non-irradiated water whenever you could get to it. Staying alive took priority over anything else.

When he can, Mako rises every day at about sunrise, has a cup of tea (whatever he can get his hands on, but he’s got a soft spot for Jasmine), and takes a shower. Everything else from there depends on where they are and who wants to arrest them, but there are those similarities.

Jamie tries it for a week and hates it. Sometimes he just doesn’t want to be up at sunrise; sometimes he’s up til four working on things, anyway. And he tries to avoid showering when he can. Something about getting burned by water scars a guy.

But, despite it, they fall into step. Mako wakes him when they both need to be up and moving in a hurry, and Jamie can stumble into his pants quick enough to get them out the door and out of danger before anything happens. When it’s moderately safe, when they have a day to just lie low and relax, Mako lets him sleep. Walks as soft as he can, which, admittedly, is still loud as hell, but one can only do so much at 500-someodd pounds. Jamie wakes at noon to find Mako on his bed, flipping through a book or repairing his gun, and smiles.

* * *

 

They keep fooling around. Sometimes it’s once a week, out of boredom holed away in some cargo ship across a nauseatingly wide sea. Sometimes it’s once a day, when they are both so tense they feel like they might snap at the slightest provocation. They start learning things about each other, little quirks and sweet spots and exactly how to crook a finger, where to bite. Mako is quiet. Jamie is loud. Neither of these things are surprising.

Jamie still doesn’t know what Mako fucking looks like. Or sounds like properly, for that matter; the mask alters his speech just enough that he knows he must sound different without it.

He knows he’s got white hair. He suspects there’s something under the mask to make him wear it. Disfiguring injury, maybe, or horrid scar? Something to earn him the name “Roadhog”? Sometimes he dreams that Mako takes off the mask and all that’s there is a blank mask of skin, featureless, pale.

It takes a while to ask, for the curiosity to burn through into need. They are drunk again. Something always happens when they are drunk. This time it is on a Scandinavian hard liquor that tastes like juniper berries as it burns all the way into your gut.

“So, what’s under the mask?” Jamie says. He is usually the first to speak. Mako isn’t one much for speaking.

“A face. The fuck did you think was under it?”

“Dunno. A trunk, maybe, like an elephant, or a whole bunch’a eyes like a bug." He spends a moment trying to make a gesture indicative of dragonfly eyes, and stops when he comes short. "Why d’y never take it off?”

Mako shrugs. “Habit. Been wearin’ it a long time. S’pose takin’ it off would be like you picking up a shotgun instead of blowin’ shit up.”

Jamie titters slightly, takes another slug of booze, shivers. “Fair. Can I see, though? We’ve been runnin’ together for, what, six months?”

“Eight and a half,” clarifies Mako. “And why d’you wanna know?”

“I know what the rest of you looks like, and you know what all of me looks like. Figure it’s a fair trade, yeah?”

Mako grunts, an audible eye-roll. “Maybe later.”

Jamie drops the subject.

* * *

 

They keep robbing things, bigger and bigger targets, a crescendo of money and explosions and crime. The bounty keeps going up, but they keep running, always two steps ahead of the authorities. In Germany they manage to escape to an abandoned cottage in an idyllic countryside, thirty kilometers off any paved road and surrounded by trees. They park the bike in a storage shed, block off the front door with a bookshelf and two tables, and sit on the floor, exhausted. Jamie’s blood is gasoline, the thrumming of his heart is a spark, his whole body is on fire. He can’t sit still.

Mako has learned to recognize this in him, he supposes, because he is coaxing him somewhere more comfortable. The couch is old. It creaks dangerously under their weight, but none of it matters. They’ve done this in shipping crates, under trees, in the strange back rooms of storefronts for money laundering schemes. It’s the same every time.

They are both very nearly undressed when Mako puts a heavy hand on Jamie’s chest and stares at him. Everything freezes.

“Something wrong, mate?” Jamie asks, voice as low as he can get it but still tense, like every muscle in him is pulled taut. Ready to snap.

Mako shakes his head, reaches to the back of his neck. Unclasps something with a soft _click_. The mask comes off. He puts it down on the couch next to him.

There is silence for a minute.

“What’s that for?” Jamie asks. The advances he had started on have stopped.

“You wanted to see. Figured I should eventually.”

Underneath the mask, Mako looks and sounds… wholly normal for a man his age. His white hair is natural, matching his eyebrows. His nose is strong. There is a scar across his lip. His eyes are brown. There are wrinkles around the corners of his eyes, and around his mouth.

“Oh,” says Jamie. For no reason he can quite understand, he wants to touch it, undo Mako’s hair. Instead, he does nothing. He stares. He shifts his weight so he’s standing up straight between Mako’s legs.

“Something wrong?” asks Mako. His voice is different without the mask. Smoother. Like river-worn stone.

“Different than I was expectin’ that’s all. Not bad, though.”

Mako nods. “Should I put it back on?”

“Nah.”

Each of them waits for the other to move first, but nobody does. The night outside is quiet. There are crickets.

Jamie sighs, shoulders going limp. He steps back. “What’re we doing?”

Mako shrugs. “I was thinkin’ you were gonna give me a blowjob, you know, the usual. ‘Less you want somethin’ different.”

“No no no no no no, not that. The fuck is this? This stupid… face, feelings, screwing nonsense. Is it just fuckin’?”

“If you want it to be.”

“Do _you_ want it to be?”

There is a long pause. Something feels as though it has snapped in the air. Mako strikes first.

“I don’t know.”

Jamie groans. “That’s not fuckin’ helpful, dipshit.”

“Well, I don’t,” Mako grunts, sitting up straight. “Dunno if you’ve noticed, but I’m not exactly a romance guy.”

Jamie paces. His leg creaks audibly. He tries to remind himself to oil the joint tomorrow but his whole brain feels like static. “It just feels differ’nt now! You know? Ever since the arm, since… fuck, Singapore or somethin’? It feels different. I dunno why. But I’m sick an’ tired of waiting around playing chicken for someone to talk first.”

“Different?”

Jamie holds up his intact hand, back facing out, fingers splayed. Nails black. He points to it with his metal hand. “Different. You started carin’ about me. Maybe it’s because I’m so bloody destructive, I dunno, but the guy who tried to kill me in the Outback wouldn’t’ve remembered to tell me when to exercise my hand. What gives?”

“Why do _you_ care?”

“I asked first, arsehole.”

Mako sighs. He doesn’t like talking. Jamie knows this.

“It’s different. I don’t know why. But it is. I do care about you, even though you’re nigh insufferable and loud and destructive, and I gotta fix your leg once a week. I'm not about to ask for your hand in marriage or anything.”

Jamie’s brow furrows. “An’ that’s why you took the mask off?”

“I figure you’ve let me see you when you’ve been blown to bits, I should let you see what my damn face looks like. Want me to put it back on?”

Jamie shakes his head. “Nah. Like the view.”

Mako’s eyebrows approach his hairline. “Really now?”

“Figure since we’re airin’ everything out, y’know.”

“Anything else you need to air out?”

Jamie groans. Runs his fingers through his hair – which, miraculously, is not on fire at the moment. “I dunno, mate. I hired you because I thought you’d be useful, y’know. Big old fucker like you and a skinny little brat like me. Thought it might be fun to have someone at my six for once. An’ it was!” He fidgets with a bolt on his right hand. “But I guess you can’t run around bein’ a criminal with someone without carin’ about them a little. Didn’t mean ta’. Just happened.”

All of the clothes are still on but Jamie feels naked, stripped bare. He feels the need to cover up.

“You call me a jackass at least once a day.”

Jamie laughs. “Yeah, I know. An’ you are, to be fair. But you’re not so bad.”

Mako chuckles, low and gravelly in his gut. “Come here, you idiot.”

Jamie obeys. Mako loops his arms around his back and kisses him, and Jamie uses too much teeth and too much tongue and he hasn’t done this in years but he feels his scalp tingle from the nape of his neck up.

There are very few coherent thoughts between the two of them for the next two hours. Mako’s hair comes out of the ponytail at some point, and at some point they both become undressed, and Jamie is characteristically loud. It is slower, though. Mako tells Jamie he kisses like the business end of a running lawnmower and Jamie asks if he should stop and Mako, low and growling, tells him “ _fuck no_ ”.

It ends like every other time, though, a crescendo to two climaxes not very far apart. Jamie’s hips feel bruised, and he’s sure they will be come morning. There is probably a bed somewhere in this place, but the living room floor is fine enough. They both fall asleep fast.

* * *

 

They wake at sunrise, stiff and sore, Jamie sprawled across Mako’s chest. They will have to leave soon. Mako grumbles as he gets up about not having any hot water for tea and Jamie swears as he stumbles into his pants.

Once he's dressed, Jamie sets to work disarming the traps he’s laid around the place, checking the perimeter. All is clear. None of them have gone off overnight. The bike is safe and intact. He whistles three times, long-long-short, and Mako is out the door within two minutes. They are off.

Junkrat sits in his sidecar. He does not wear a helmet, although there is one for him. He complains about bugs in his teeth. Roadhog grunts at him and tells him to shut up or he’ll leave him at the next rest stop.

He never does. He never will.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks a bunch to my partner [ren](http://twitter.com/celebrimbors) and my pal [knivesgirl](http://twitter.com/1v1mepunk) for looking this over for me!  
> i'm on [tumblr](http://lethandral1s.tumblr.com) and [twitter](http://twitter.com/lethandralis), come say hi! ♥


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